"Flow", Engagement and the Thinking Classroom

After watching this video, I ponder over two questions.

1. What is authentic happiness?

In the video, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says, " In fact, you can find that the lack of basic/material resources contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources does not increase happiness." This point also helps me recall Maslow's pyramid of human needs. The fulfillment of deficiency needs (the lower four levels of the pyramid) makes people feel safe and comfortable. If people want to obtain lasting happiness or a higher level of happiness, they need to reach the top of the pyramid which is self-actualization. In Csikszentmihalyi's words, happiness comes when people are so involved in an activity or in "flow". Therefore, authentic happiness is not how much money you earned or where you live, but how often you could fully be involved in an activity you love. 

2. How to cultivate happiness in a high school mathematics classroom? 

Based on Maslow and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theories, firstly we need to create a learning environment in which students could feel emotionally and physically safe. Then we need to use some teaching strategies and learning activities to keep students involved in math lessons. By looking at Csikszentmihalyi's flow model, we understand that the balance between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer must be controlled properly. In other words, if the challenge level of the activities and the skill level of students are not matched, students may feel bored or anxious, then students could not enjoy learning. So it is important to consider the balance between students' ability levels and the challenge of tasks when creating lesson plans. When students completely get involved in the learning process they may have a happy learning journey. 

The new BC curriculum & secondary math course pathways structure

The amazing thing about new BC curriculum is flexibility. I can see that the innovation in the classroom is encouraged, and the flexible teachers are demanded. In this diverse society, this change is necessary. The new BC curriculum shows me that they value putting a priority on student needs, and also give teachers the freedom to do so. It provides teachers space to think what is the good teaching and where should improve. For example, if today 's discussion is of greatest interest to the students, teacher could think about expanding class time a little bit. 

Another thing that caught my attention is about culture. The history of the Asian and South Asian communities are added in the curriculum, and aboriginal culture and perspectives are integrated throughout all areas of learning in the curriculum. I think I need to learn more indigenous culture and teaching skills to fill my shortcomings in this part. 

Numerical Puzzle

My solution for the given puzzle :

30 is an even number, so I put 30 numbers into two rows. 

1,    2,  ….  ,  15

16,  17, … ,   30

1 is diametrically opposite to 16, 15 is diametrically opposite to 30. 

Since 7 is 6 more than 1, so its diametrically opposite number is 6 more than 16 which is 22. 

Answer is 22. 

An extended puzzle:

48 points are labelled on the 4 sides of a square in order. Each side of the square has same number of points, and the points should not be placed on the vertices. The distance between any two adjacent points including vertex is equal. Which number is opposite to 15?

In my puzzle, the total number of points should be the multiple of 4, otherwise it is impossible to solve this puzzle. 

What makes a puzzle truly geometric, rather than simply logical?

A more geometric puzzle should involve elements of geometry and geometric relationships. Take the first puzzle as an example, circle and point are elements of geometry, "equally spaced" and "diametrically opposite" tell us the geometric relationships among these elements. So the first puzzle is an more geometric puzzle. I think most of the students will choose drawing a picture to solve it.   

Impossible puzzle:

I believe both impossible puzzles and possible puzzles are valuable to be given to our students to work with. Firstly, because the process is more important. The problem solving process could bring us closer to the truth. This truth could also be " no solution". Secondly, I think impossible puzzles could promote inventions. For example, space travel, aviation, mobile communications, etc. most of them were deemed impossible. We keep working on these impossible puzzles until one day we find a way to work out. Working on impossible puzzles doesn't mean we will get stuck somewhere, but learn something new to us. 

Reading response: Three curricula all schools teach

I stopped when I read " competitiveness … is also fostered by the differentiation of classes into ability groups". In the high school I worked last year, there are honors Math classes. And some students who successfully compete for grades can apply grade skipping. I observed that students in the honor classes are more active than the students in the regular classes. The learning contents in both classes are actually the same, except students in honor classes have more challenging exercise questions. Eisner asks "why should students whose background or genetic makeup is advantageous be rewarded in this public way?" (p. 91)I think the problem lies in the name. The name of the class should reflect the feature of the course instead of classifying people. For example, "Math class" means students in this class learn mathematics. However, "Elite class" will make people think students in this class are all elites, and that's inappropriate. The same logic for honor class, parents and students think students in honor classes are more honorable. I think changing a name might be a good try. 

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

Than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance"

For my understanding, it means he'd rather do something hard than to do something impossible. Even though the bird does not know how to teach us singing, it is possible to learn singing from the bird. But no matter how hard you try to teach stars how not to dance, they will dance forever if we watch them through the atmosphere. It is mission impossible. However, if it is needed to teach thousands of stars how not to dance, we should try to do this job. After all, nothing is impossible. We shouldn't let "impossible" to stop us before we even start. 

Eisner also stated that " the null curriculum includes the study of economics".(p. 103) Nowadays, many people noticed this point. American mathematician Arthur Benjamin in his 2009 TED talk suggested that high school students should be taught statistics and probability. I think both of them have the same consideration. Last year, when I worked in a high school, I noticed that the Math curriculum has been added a lot of contents related to Economics, Statistics and Probability. Who designed our curriculum? I think no matter who designed it, we all have right and responsibility to improve it. What should be taught and what is the good teaching? Different people will give different answers, but all answers I think should be based on two points: teaching is for learning, and curriculum is built around authentic learning. 

Microteaching Lesson Plan

Microteaching Lesson Plan

Title: From Pictograms to Modern Simplified Chinese Characters
Subject: Language	Course: EDCP 342	Date:  Oct. 14	Duration: 10 minutes

Lesson Objectives:	·         Students will learn some Simplified Chinese characters ·         Know how Chinese characters were created and the way to memorize them ·         get confident to start learning Chinese characters
Materials Needed:	Paper and pen

	Lesson Components	Learning Activities	Time Allotted
1.	Introduction:	·      Explain why learning Chinese character is easier than you think	2 minutes
2.	Learning Tasks:	·       First group of Chinese Characters –Pictographs (drawing). ·       Second group of Chinese Characters – Ideographic (symbols, abstract drawings) ·       Third group of Chinese Characters – Phono-semantic compound (combinations)	5 minutes
3.	Practice and activities:	·       Some characters will be shown in this part, and students could try to guess their meanings.	2 minutes
4.	Conclusion and discussion:	·       Any question and any Chinese character you want to discuss or know now	1 minutes

Reflection:

I really enjoyed the process of designing and presenting this microteaching, and one of the reasons is that I am personally interested in this topic. This is a valuable teaching experience. 

According to comments and my self-assessment, I think there is more room to improve upon the Pacing. I should speak slowly and offer my audiences more time to think and response. I think there is the difference between teaching and presenting. Teaching should be student-oriented. Next time, I will create more opportunities to engage my audiences/students

Microteaching Lesson---From Pictograms to Modern Chinese Characters

                   

Chinese Characters look exotic and mysterious, but memorizing and writing these characters are the most difficult part. During my microteaching lesson, I will firstly teach you some Chinese characters which derive from pictographs, such like sun, wood, water. Secondly, I will teach you some ideographic characters, such as one ,  two, up, down. Thirdly, based on the characters we learn in first two parts, I will teach you some phono-semantic compound characters. 

I believe there will be a lot of fun. Next time, when you see some Chinese characters, you might be able to guess what it means with some basic knowledge of Chinese characters you learned today.

Reflection( Oct 1st) ----- Battleground Schools ,Mathematics Education

When I read this article I stopped many times and make connections between text and my own experiences and the knowledge I learned recently. 

The four presumptions about people's attitudes toward the Mathematics remind me of the responsibilities I will take as a Math teacher. Mathematics is hard sometimes. However, I will feel sad if some people feel mathematics is cold, distant and inhuman. They must had some unpleasant experiences with mathematics. I think their math teachers should be responsible for most part of this. I remember Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." As a Math teacher, my priority goal is to provide my students with a safe learning environment. Trust is my recipe. I believe they will all be successful in the future in different area, even if they might be not good at Math. The most important thing is to help them enjoy the math learning. No one will say " I'm just not an art person, physics person, history person, or language person", but why just "not a Math person"? Once they are labeled as " not a Math person", there is a huge gap between them and Mathematics forever. And this group of " not a Math person" will be lager and larger, since staying in a group can make them feel safe. But we could not forbid them to say so, we need to let them feel they are not "not a Math person" by showing them other sides of the Mathematics. Math is in the art, Math is in the history, and Math is even in the music. We are Math person, since Math is not just abstract concepts.  

When I read "the New Math movement", I stopped for " Many counties, particularly less-developed nations concerned that they might be left behind the developed world in matters of education, …the jet-setting curriculum developers showed little regard for local conditions, cultures, or educational traditions, ….this was wholly inappropriate." (p.399) Reflecting on this, I think when we introduce students to any new concepts and problem solving methods or skills, we need to consider students' ability levels, learning experiences, background knowledges, cultural differences, etc. to determine our teaching contents, methods and strategies.